Team’s exit one more dark day for Atlanta

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/06/2011 (5272 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

November 15, 1864, wasn’t a great day in the history of Atlanta.

That’s when legendary Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman gave orders to burn all public buildings, machine shops, depots and arsenals in the city during the Civil War.

Let the history books show that May 31, 2011, a little after 11 a.m. Winnipeg time, wasn’t such a hot day for Atlanta, either.

At least it wasn’t for hockey fans in the bustling Georgia capital, home to about 4.4 million people in the 28-county metropolitan area.

While thousands of jubilant Winnipeggers rejoiced at The Forks and Portage and Main over the return of the NHL, diehard Atlanta fans were shedding tears over the loss of the team they’d come to love, but not love enough for the governors of the National Hockey League.

You probably think I’m kidding about fans in the Deep South weeping over the demise of the Thrashers. As usual, you could not be more wrong.

In the spirit of diplomacy, I decided to call Atlanta Tuesday to see how fans there were holding up. OK, the truth is, I figured I’d be able to write a vaguely amusing column about searching for someone in the southern city who remembered the name of their team.

Turns out, I was wrong.

I started with Lisa Lewis, president of the Atlanta Thrashers Fan Club, whose website boasts it’s the largest fan club in the NHL, with 896 members.

It turns out Lisa is a lovely woman with a charming Georgia accent who politely answered all of my questions, all while quietly weeping during most of our long-distance conversation.

“I’ve been married to this team for so long,” Lisa began, “This is heartbreaking!

“Everybody’s very upset. Very upset. It’s hard.

“It’s pitiful. I love hockey. I haven’t missed a home game in five complete seasons. I’ve been sick and injured and I still show up.”

I briefly pondered pointing out the Thrashers, even at the best of times, gave their fans a lot of reasons to drink and weep, but somehow the timing seemed wrong.

I told her Winnipeg understands Atlanta’s pain.

“I’ve been crying for about an hour,” Lisa said, stifling a sniffle. “I’ve been crying for weeks. This is like losing family. It’s the death of a hockey family.”

I asked whether fans in Atlanta are mad at us. “I’m not mad at Winnipeg, not at all,” she continued while, on a newsroom TV, I could hear NHL commissioner Gary Bettman saying nice things about Atlanta.

“I don’t blame Winnipeg,” she told me, “This isn’t about a lack of support from the fans here; it’s all about the way the ownership (the Atlanta Spirit Group) has treated us.”

Atlanta’s top hockey fan also had some choice words for NHL boss Bettman. “The fact he could not set foot in Atlanta and address the fans is sickening,” she declared. “I can tell you thousands of emails have gone out and we haven’t heard anything from Bettman.”

I desperately wanted to cheer Lisa up, but the only thing that popped into my head was the fact my beloved Vancouver Canucks are in the Stanley Cup final for the first time in 17 years. I asked whether she’d been planning to root for the Canucks.

“Yeah, I was, until all this went down,” she said. “I doubt I’ll be watching the playoffs. It’s going to take a while. I’m a bit inconsolable. I’m angry and hurt.”

The mood wasn’t a whole lot brighter over at TJ’s Sports Bar, an Atlanta watering hole where Thrashers faithful have gathered for years to watch games on the bar’s 60-odd TVs.

“I think the South gets a bad rap from hockey fans, but there’s a lot more of them than you’d think,” said Mark Ecclestone, who co-owns the bar along with his dad, Tim (“the coach”), who played for the Atlanta Flames, the city’s first NHL franchise, from 1974 to 1980.

“This is Round 2 for me, losing a team,” Mark said. “I was nine years old when the Flames left for Calgary. Some people live and die by the hockey team. This winter will be pretty lonely.”

While preparing for a crush in the wake of the Memorial Day holiday weekend, he said a handful of hockey fanatics had already trickled in to drown their sorrows.

“I think a lot of people are just glad it’s over,” he said, thoughtfully. “They’ve been living on the edge.” He said there’s anger towards Bettman and the Thrashers owners, but not Winnipeg. “I think you guys got a great team coming and you’ll probably be in the playoffs next year.”

Normally, I’d end with a lame joke, but today I thought it would be nice to give the last word to superfan Lisa Lewis, who had this heart-felt warning for hockey fans here:

“Take care of my boys, or I’ll come up to Winnipeg!”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca